In a bid to reach out to MNREGA workers ahead of the 2014 lok Sabha polls, the Centre has asked the States not to cancel their job cards merely on the basis of the workers’ failure to demand work under the Wage For Employment Scheme.
In a recent directive to the States, the Union Rural Development Ministry has made it clear that job cards can be cancelled only in cases where family has migrated permanently to urban areas. The Centrally-sponsored programme envisages that each household, whose adult members are willing to do unskilled manual work, is issued a job card. It is a key document which records workers’ entitlements, empowers the registered households to apply for jobs, ensures transparency and protects workers against frauds.
However, a senior official of the Central RD Ministry said that it has been found that many States were resorting to cancellation of these job cards merely on grounds that the cardholders had not demanded work under the programme. It is against the rules, said the official. But, he refused to reply to the query as to why the Ministry did not consider the issue of card cancellation all these years — since the launch of the scheme in 2006.
The official said that we have asked the States that “no job card can be cancelled in a routine manner and certainly not on grounds of non-reporting for work. “Job cards can be cancelled only if the entire household has migrated permanently to an urban area. In such cases, the programme officer after independent verification of facts and giving the concerned person an opportunity to be heard may direct the Gram Panchayat to cancel such cards.”
To ensure transparency, the official asserted that the list of cancelled job cardholders shall be made public and should be presented to the Gram Sabha. At the time of renewal, any modifications in the particulars of the households should be simultaneously updated. The Government claims that in 2011-12, a total of 12.39 crore job cards were issued. However, the process has been marred with irregularities.
As per the recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), job cards were not issued to 12,455 households in six States, while 4.33 lakh job cards in seven States did not have a photograph on them. There were 18,325 cases in which multiple job cards were issued in the name of the same person. In as many as 12,008 cases, delay in issuance of job cards ranged up to 51 months, as reported by the CAG.